What modern writer
does not owe Ernest Hemingway an enormous debt? His prose demonstrates
the impact of a single word. Simultaneously, his famous Iceberg Theory
omits every element that a reader already knows. Overall, his conquest
of the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes leaves his literary descendants gasping
in his wake.

No movie makes this point more clearly than The Man from Elysian
Fields, which alludes to the literary giant in its opening scene.
With Andy Garcia playing the ambitious Byron Tiller, the film expands
the warnings found in A Moveable Feast. This memoir described
the villains awaiting those with dreams of publishing the magnum opus.
The rich, both coming and going, tormented Hemingway from the beginning
to the end of his years beside the Seine.

In place of Paris,
however, this movie sets the Hemingway hero down in California, where,
it suggests, more than one Pulitzer prizewinner dwells. Instead, Garcia
encounters the mysterious Luther Fox, brilliantly played by another icon
-- Mick Jagger. If the devil ever appears in broad daylight, surely he
will saunter like this limber rock star. Every nuance of his protean face
underscores the temptations sending a writer straight to psychological
hell.

In fact, though, Fox
claims credit for leading the naïve Tiller in the opposite direction.
His business, Elysian Fields, supplies the marathon writer with an income
even while it wrecks his private life. The plot parallels selected facts
of Hemingway's own expatriate existence in the twenties -- the loving
wife, a doll of a son, extramarital romance, and connections with an artistic
world too glittering to offer salvation.

First-rate casting
characterizes the actresses in this film. As the supportive helpmate,
Julianna Margulies maximizes the sensuality of the ingénue. Her anger
at her spouse climaxes in scenes of reserve, requiring the full range
of a major talent. Her foil, Olivia Williams, perfectly captures the benign
impression of an author's angel. Will someone unveil her treachery before
it staggers our wannabe?

Premier among the
film's pantheon of con artists, the Pulitzer prize-winning Tobias Alcott
(James Coburn) devotes the remainder of his life to exploiting his competition.
Only Shakespeare, perhaps, critiques the great more thoroughly than this
movie. "Lilies that fester," the Bard of Avon lectures, "smell far worse
than weeds" (Sonnet 94. 14). The white mane of the bard may not symbolize
a lily, but neither will Alcott willingly retreat into the dark night
of failing inspiration.

This movie should
be required viewing for all Hemingway imitators. That famous progenitor
left us his account of an artistic Eden, where human snakes lie in ambush.
This film's scriptwriter, Phillip Jayson Lasker, unleashes an emotional
meltdown: His trumped Casanova battles to burn shame into glory.

For a fiendish ride
through the perils of success, order this film immediately -- watch it
for every last drop of insight. Released in 2002, its vision will never
lose currency.